(Image Source: The New York Times)
BY JENNIFER LONG
ANCHOR CHRISTINA HARTMAN
You're watching multisource politics video news analysis from Newsy.
$300 billion. That’s the ticket price on Obama’s new plan to create jobs. The president is expected to lay out the details in an address to Congress on Thursday night.
Politico reporter David Catanese explains on CBS what the president’s up against.
“You have a POLITICO battleground poll out that says 72% of the country thinks that the nation is going in the wrong direction, You’ve got Republicans who are likely to oppose most of what he lays out in his speech and you have Democrats waiting for him to go big, progressives who want him to put a huge stimulus program on the table … So a very difficult moment for him and it’s going to be tough politically to win this battle either way.”
CNN reports-- the plan will include $300 billion in spending and an equal amount in cuts, making this a revenue neutral package. This-- after a Department of Labor report shows the unemployment rate did not change in the month of August, stalling at 9.1 percent.
According to the International Business Times...
“The nation needs to create about 100,000 to 125,000 jobs per month just to prevent the unemployment rate from rising: so far the recovery has averaged a 144,000-job gain per month.”
Now the attention turns to Mr. Obama’s job-- and whether Thursday’s speech can help him keep it. A CNN contributor says this.
Anchor: "He needs to revive his presidency! Do you think he'll do it? Maybe on Thursday night?"
CNN Contributor: "Well those two are one in the same thing at this point ... There is time for this president to turn things around. He's going to have to get things going though for sure and it won't just be one speech, it'll be the actual policies, it will be the actual job numbers."
And it’s the actual job numbers that matter to Obama-- not just reelection. That’s what Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources Thomas Nides tells Bloomberg.
“This is not about an election which is 16, 17 months away. You know as well as I know the American people don’t care. What they do want to do is they want to get their jobs, they want to show that the president connects and cares, which he does. That he’s presenting ideas that are important about getting the economy going again. The president is not seen obsessing about the reelection that we don’t even have a Republican opponent.”
No U.S. President has ever been re-elected with unemployment so high. The president will address Congress at 9 p.m. Eastern on Thursday.
Transcript by Newsy.
